United Nations in 2009

United NationsMike Segar—Reuters/LandovThe United Nations in 2009 continued its efforts to deal with important global issues on many fronts but was forced to do so in the context of the continuing global economic and financial crisis. It was the UN Year of Climate Change, but little progress toward a comprehensive global climate change agreement emerged. The global food crisis persisted, but few new concerted global actions were targeted for dealing with it coherently. Afghanistan rose to the top of the global security agenda as insecurity and the death toll there mounted significantly. Progress toward attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) stagnated along with the global economy. On a more positive note, 2009 marked the return to greater engagement in multilateral affairs of the United States, led by the new administration of Pres. Barack Obama.

Peace and Security

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to dominate global peace and security news. The security situation in Afghanistan continued to decline. Much of the violence centred on the lead-up to and the follow-up to the presidential elections. This fact was highlighted when on October 28 five staff members of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) were killed in a suicide attack in Kabul. UNAMA estimated that Afghan civilian deaths exceeded 2,000 during the first 10 months of the year.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq continued its work in support of political reconciliation, institution building, and establishment of the rule of law in the country. At the end of the year, the UN fielded 17 peace missions comprising more than 117,000 troops, police, and civilians, with a total annual budget of nearly $7.8 billion. Troops and personnel were contributed by more than 100 member states, with the largest contributors being Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria. Of the 17 missions, 8 were in Africa, where the UN increased its presence in Chad, Darfur (a region of The Sudan), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Highlighting the situation in Africa, the UN Security Council in January authorized the deployment of 5,500 uniformed personnel to replace the European Union EUFOR military force. As of October 31, just under 3,000 uniformed personnel were in place. By the end of November 2009, the hybrid United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) had been increased to 19,588 uniformed personnel. The primary mandate of the force remained the protection of civilians and humanitarian assistance providers as well as the monitoring of the implementation of agreements, assistance in the development of political processes, and promotion of good governance. As in 2008, UNAMID’s work remained hampered by the lack of transport and aviation assets and logistic support. The UN Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) continued its main mandate to help resolve core issues that stood in the way of implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. By December UNMIS, with 9,955 uniformed personnel in the field, had nearly reached its authorized level of 10,000. The UN mission in the DRC continued to be the largest. In November 2008 the Security Council authorized the expansion of the force by 3,000 military and police, and as of Nov. 30, 2009, 20,255 uniformed personnel were in the field. Meanwhile, the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire stood at more than 8,000 in October 2009. Somalia remained high on the list of international security concerns. At year’s end the Security Council approved sanctions on Eritrea for aiding Somali insurgents and continuing its conflict with Djibouti.

Preventative diplomacy and the use by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon of special and personal representatives and envoys became ever-increasing tools in the UN’s peace-building efforts. In 2009 such special envoys were actively engaged in more than 30 countries or regions, and more than two dozen other UN emissaries were assigned to deal with specific global policy issues, such as climate change, financing for development, human rights, humanitarian aid, and so forth. The importance placed on postconflict peace building also grew in recent years. By April 2009 the UN’s Peacebuilding Fund had received more than $300 million in contributions and had allocated more than $131 million to 12 countries for 65 projects.

The review process for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons picked up momentum, and a formal review conference was in the works for 2010. Nuclear and conventional weapons proliferation remained an important agenda item, with particular focus on North Korea and Iran. The former conducted a second nuclear test in May 2009 in violation of Security Council resolutions, and concern continued over Iran’s evolving nuclear program. On October 30, UN member states agreed to a timetable for negotiating an arms trade treaty by 2012.

Terrorism

In September 2008 the UN General Assembly renewed its commitment to the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy that it had adopted two years earlier. A UN Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force had been established in 2005, and Secretary-General Ban was requested to make the necessary institutional changes to enhance the organization’s support of the task force’s work, which was organized around eight working groups focusing on cross-cutting themes.

On Dec. 17, 2009, the UN Security Council passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution (Res. 1904) to revise the content and process of the UN 1267 Committee’s sanctions list, making it more transparent and fair and providing recourse for individuals and firms wrongly included on the UN sanctions list. The primary purpose of the UN list was to serve as a tool for governments to deny terrorists access to funding, weapons, travel, and other resources.

Humanitarian Affairs and Human Rights

UN humanitarian relief efforts reached near-record levels in 2008, responding to 55 emergencies, including natural disasters, the global food crisis, and civil conflict. More than $12 billion was mobilized globally for such efforts. In late November 2009 the UN launched a $7.1 billion appeal for contributions for 2010 to assist 48 million people in 25 countries. The number of refugees declined in 2008. The year ended with 10.5 million refugees under the care of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and 4.7 million receiving assistance from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In addition, another 839,000 individuals filed claims for asylum or refugee status, and 827,000 cases awaited determination at the end of the year. Nearly half of the refugees receiving assistance from UNHCR were from Iraq and Afghanistan; another 20% were from Africa. More than two-thirds of the world’s displaced peoples remained inside their own countries. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) remained around 26 million for the second consecutive year. UNHCR cared for more than half of these IDPs. Nineteen African countries accounted for 11.6 million IDPs, and The Sudan, Colombia, and Iraq were home to the largest number of internally displaced persons.

Reversing the administration policy of former president George W. Bush toward the UN Human Rights Council, the U.S. sought and won election to the world’s highest human rights body in May 2009. Upon taking office, President Obama moved to ban the use of torture by the U.S. military and issued an executive order to close the infamous Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention centre (known as Gitmo) within one year. A military judge at Guantánamo and later the U.S. Senate moved to block the order, however. More than 200 detainees remained at Gitmo in November, but on December 15 Obama issued a presidential memorandum ordering the transfer of detainees to Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois. The measure would need approval by the U.S. Congress, however.

As 2009 drew to a close, domestic violence in Iran intensified. UNHCR expressed concern over excessive use of force and human rights violation by Iranian security forces and called on the government to halt these activities.

Development and the MDGs

Only six years remained until the 2015 target deadline for achieving the MDGs. Yet, in the words of the 2009 UN Millennium Development Goals Report, the outlook was “grim.” The global economic downturn had a significant impact on the MDG process. Progress toward achieving the goals was slowed in many areas and even reversed in others. In regard to MDG 1—reducing extreme poverty—the strides made during the preceding decade and a half were blunted, and although overall poverty rates continued to decline, the UN estimated that 55 million to 90 million more people would be living in extreme poverty than had been anticipated prior to the economic crisis that began in late 2008. The situation for girls and women was especially problematic. Women continued to be much more vulnerable with regard to sustainable livelihoods, and four years after the MDG target date for reaching gender parity in primary- and secondary-school education, girls lagged behind. Maternal health—the MDG on which there was the least progress to date—remained an elusive quest.

The UN reported that the gap between the goal of creating an international trading system that was rule-based, predictable, equitable, and nondiscriminatory and the reality of the 2009 global trading system was widening. In 2008 official development assistance (ODA) reached its highest level ever, increasing by 10% in real terms over 2007. Over the previous decade, assistance to less-developed countries (LDCs)—especially sub-Saharan African countries—had increased substantially. LDCs accounted for about 30% of all ODA. Yet ODA distribution and coverage remained very skewed. In 2007, for example, two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, with less than 2% of the population of less-developed countries, received one-sixth of the total country-allocatable ODA.

Food Crisis

The world food crisis that had significantly worsened in 2008 remained one of the world’s greatest challenges in 2009. Despite a decrease in prices in late 2008, food costs continued to be high.

A World Food Summit on food security was held in Rome on Nov. 16–18, 2009. The final conference document, while calling on governments to reinforce efforts to meet the MDG target of reducing hunger by half by 2015, contained no new financial commitments for doing so. On a more positive note, the World Bank announced in late November that it had launched a $1.5 billion trust fund to promote agricultural production in poor countries. Donor countries pledged a total of $20 billion in aid.

Health

Beginning in April 2009, the world witnessed the first influenza pandemic in more than four decades—influenza A H1N1. By year’s end 12,220 deaths had been reported worldwide, and the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared the pandemic on the decline. H1N1 vaccines were finally becoming available in many areas worldwide. (SeeSpecial Report.)

As a result largely of global and regional immunization campaigns, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, deaths from measles dropped 74% from 2000 to 2007. More than 80% of children 12–23 months old in less-developed regions received at least one dose of measles vaccine.

The global campaign against malaria made inroads, but nearly a million people died annually of the disease. Malaria deaths were highly regionalized, with 89% in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008; the overwhelming majority of fatalities were children. To frustrate matters, in late December 2009, news broke of a new drug-resistant strain of malaria in the Cambodia-Thailand border region.

Globally, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS continued to hover around 33 million. In some regions, however, infection rates continued to rise. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, for example, HIV prevalence rates had doubled since 2001, and the number of persons living with HIV/AIDS had ballooned from 630,000 in 2001 to 1,600,000 in 2007. Two-thirds of persons living with HIV were located in sub-Saharan Africa, and most of these were women.

Maternal mortality continued to plague the LDCs worldwide; in 2005 (the year for which the most recent statistics were available), more than half a million women and girls died annually from birth-related complications—representing 99% of such deaths globally. Half of all maternal deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, and another third occurred in South Asia.

Environment

In October 2008 the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) called for a “Global Green New Deal” and launched the Green Economy Initiative to provide a long-term strategy for dealing with global environmental degradation. Two months later Secretary-General Ban reiterated this call and challenged member states to provide investment to create millions of green jobs. By 2009 various UN agencies were mobilized for the effort.

The year 2009 was the UN-designated Year of Climate Change. A series of major international conferences were held, culminating in a final global agreement in Copenhagen in December to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which was scheduled to expire in 2012. The rather contentious Copenhagen conference (attended by representatives from 193 countries) elicited a very weak nonbinding global agreement. The outcome document provided for $100 billion in aid by 2020 for poor countries to address climate change and noted the importance of taking measures to limit global warming to a target level of 2 °C (3.6 °F). There were no binding targets, however.

Administration and Reform

By the end of 2009, the number of UN member states stood at 192. The regular biennial budget for 2008–09 was $4.87 billion. Secretary-General Ban’s restructuring of the UN’s peace and security operations—including the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Department of Field Support, the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions, and Integrated Operational Teams—continued during the year. In an attempt to revitalize the UN Secretariat, the General Assembly agreed to streamline the organization’s personnel and service-delivery systems.

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